


her eye discourses

by tortoiseshells



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Ambiguously Between 1x05 and 2x01, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jed ships Henry and Emma pass it on, Mr. Squivers Makes A Cameo, Season/Series 01, Talking About Shakespeare To Avoid Feelings, Talking About Shakespeare To Embrace Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 10:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15947156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells
Summary: No one had asked for permission, and so permission had been dispensed with.Or, the men are bored, William Shakespeare is badly performed, and the denizens of the Mansion House Hospital ponder their relations - all in five acts.





	her eye discourses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/gifts).



**prologue.**

“Hadn’t, um,” Mr. Squivers started inauspiciously, “Hadn’t they – this play’s about death, Nurse Mary, isn’t it?”

“Not only that,” she replied, looking across the wards to where Privates Kemble and Irving were swatting at each other with misappropriated canes. She thought shy, quiet Kemble poorly cast as Tybalt. But Kemble, who had taken a bayonet thrust to his shoulder, had insisted he knew well how to be grievously stabbed and die, and that argument had carried the day over his complete lack of temper or impetuosity. 

“But that is – that isn’t detrimental? To morale?”

“It doesn’t appear to be.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Squivers, and laboriously copied out the observation in the book he inconveniently and always had on hand.

Doing her best to smile, and not sigh, at the cadet’s enthusiasm for note-taking, Mary turned back to her work, keeping the sparring soldiers in the corner of her eye.

 

**i.**

“What’s in a name?” sighed Private Welles, “That which we call a rose by any other name would … would … any other name would-”

“-Would smell as sweet,” Corporal Gielgud prompted, looking up from his battered book, and, to Mary’s eye, looking as though he had second thoughts about his cast of convalescing players.

Welles nodded, and repeated himself under his breath, building up a head of steam. “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title,” he continued, sweetly as possible, clutching a pilfered shawl around his shoulders in a decent approximation of maidenly virtue.

For her own part, Mary continued changing Gielgud’s dressing. The bandages came away cleanly under her hands, and she tied the new ones down, nodding slowly as Welles continued in his high falsetto, the Corporal mouthing Juliet’s part to himself. Private Aherne, soon to return to his family in Rhode Island, leaned rakishly on his crutch, and proclaimed Romeo’s love in response. She smiled to hear it, to see it, even as her mind skipped ahead. There would and could be no stage, and Gielgud’s hastily-assembled players would be costumed more in rich imagination than in doublets and farthingales. 

“What man art thou that thus bescreen’d in night so stumblest on my counsel?” trilled Welles, continuing.

Aherne, bescreen’d in nothing but a much-mended shirt and muddy trousers, replied as best he could. “By a name! I know not how to tell thee who I am,” and trailed off, looking to Gielgud for his line.

Gielgud sighed, again, deeply. 

“I’m done now, Corporal,” Mary said, softly, standing up with the soiled bandages in hand. “I’ll return later. Perhaps with something that suggests ‘Juliet’ more strongly than a knitted shawl?”

“You’re a kind soul to offer,” Gielgud smiled, “Thank you.”

“Try to get some rest, Corporal.” With a nod to the erstwhile Romeo and Juliet, Mary left for the next patients, inventorying what she had to hand for costumes, what might be found. Perhaps Miss Green would be willing to help.

 

 **ii.**

It would have been better, perhaps, thought Emma Green, if Corporal Gielgud had not been so determined to have Private Campbell as his Friar Lawrence. However enthusiastic, agile, and Catholic the Private was, he was now also laid up with what Dr. Hale had, too-familiarly, called the “quick-step”, and was unavailable either to secretly marry Welles and Aherne, or to decry the bloody feud in the streets of Verona. _Violent delights have violent ends_ , she recalled the line, and shuddered. Revulsion for the war and her own failures ate away at her heart. 

“Would you read Campbell’s part, Nurse Green?” he asked, “You were with him before, you read with him, you know the part.”

“I am needed in the wards, Corporal,” she demurred as firmly as possible.

Gielgud was neither gentleman enough to understand, nor the kind to be easily turned aside. “Cannot Nurse Mary spare you for a scene? A handful of minutes?” And he gestured to Mary, who was waiting close-by, and observing, her eyes large and dark.

Emma could not read her expression. She knew, though, that Mary had been watching her of late, since those brutal men had paraded Tom’s remains through the streets of Alexandria, and she had collapsed, weeping, into the older woman’s arms. It felt sororal – sisterly – almost. A month ago, she would have bristled, would have brushed off such frank, Yankee concerns like dust. Now, though. Now she was tired, and her hands were bloody, and she was not so sure.

If Mary did not see all of this, she at least saw Emma’s hesitation. “I need Nurse Green to help with supper. Perhaps she can return later.”

The corporal nodded – as if he could have done anything else – and Emma followed Nurse Mary into the impromptu kitchen. Instead of starting to prepare evening meals, however, Mary sat her down and fetched her a cup of tea as quickly as though she had simply magicked it from the thin, close air.

“Chaplain Hopkins informed me your father has been arrested,” she began quietly, calmly, as if to explain her actions.

Emma, her throat suddenly tight, nodded. This was not the crux of her hurt, only a part of it, and it shamed her. 

“I am very sorry, Miss Green. Emma. You and I do not agree on other matters, I think, but burying your friend with his family was noble.”

“My father is a good man, Nurse Mary. Tom -” she choked on her words, unable to continue. _Tom was a good man_ , she wanted to say, but that was not true. Tom was barely eighteen. Tom was a boy. Had been a boy. Sent himself to his own grave a boy.

She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, and breathed, slowly and shakily. “Boys,” she managed to say. “They’re all boys out there. Playing at war, at dying.”

“In the wards,” Mary asked, carefully, “Or outside?”

“Both! My father, imprisoned over nothing! Boys dying in the fields and what’s it to Lincoln? To President Davis? They may as well be tin soldiers knocked over and stowed in a box,” Emma cried. “And in here! Private Kemble staggering and collapsing, and the rest of the ward applauding! How can they make fun of death?”

She had more to say, but she hadn’t the heart for it. Emma tucked her chin to her chest and felt her shoulders heave, her head spin – and Mary taking her hands in her own, soothingly.

“I cannot answer for the men imprisoning your father, or the war. But in here, to make light of death, of dying? It takes the sting of it away,” Mary said quietly, “It makes them less afraid, and eases their minds.”

“It’s ghastly.”

“It is. But that is their lives now, and they cope with it as best they may. And we help them, Emma. You’ve done a great deal for them. Even the Union boys.”

 _Helped a boy to murder himself_ , she thought bitterly, and wanted desperately to confess, to tell her exactly what sort of an angel of mercy she’d been. But Emma found she could not. Bad enough that Tom’s secret was already borne by two, she couldn’t shame his memory more. Instead of admitting her guilt, she leaned into Mary’s shoulder, and cried.

 

**iii.**

“What is the meaning of this?” 

Hale’s bellow sheared through the rehearsal, leaving the players unsure and unsettled. Private Welles – Juliet – stood stunned, halfway a curtsey, and Cibber – Lord Capulet – teetered, and looked like a lost boy instead of the magnanimous host. It put Emma in mind of puppets whose master had been suddenly interrupted, held upright without animation. She looked down at her hands, guiltily realizing that she’d stopped as well. She set back to changing Sergeant Siddons’ dressings quickly, smiling at the rangy campaigner who’d lost half his face. 

“It’s _Romeo & Juliet_, sir,” announced Corporal Gielgud, who Emma knew had been tended to by Doctor Foster, and thus had no experience with Hale’s abrasive manner.

“I am aware that you are reading Shakespeare.”

“Well, it’s just that, Dr. Hale. The men – we – aren’t doing much, other than studying the plaster and playing cards. Private Irving had the book, I’d done stagehanding in New York, and, well, we all got the time.”

Hale harrumped, and gestured to the makeshift curtains and Welles’s skirt, indecorously showing his ankles. “And all of this out of Army supplies, no doubt.”

“The curtains, sure, sir. They’re just blankets off of the beds. We put ‘em back after.”

“And the rest?”

“It was my initiative, Dr. Hale,” announced Nurse Mary, moving into the room as purposefully as any debuting belle Emma had ever seen. She watched everyone turn swiftly to mind Mary, and how Gielgud’s handsome face telegraphed relief.

“Your initiative?”

“Yes,” said Mary, folding her hands before her, and minutely setting her jaw, “The men, as Corporal Gielgud observed, are restless. You and I have both seen quarrels – sometime brawls – on the wards. This theatrical exercise is a harmless means of entertainment.”

“I hardly think the proprietors of the Astor Opera House would agree with you, Miss Phinney -”

“-We’re not putting on _Hamlet_ , Doctor Hale-” interrupted Gielgud, offended.

“-and if these men are well enough to fancy themselves squabbling Venetians, then they are well enough to work!”

“Many of them are! They’ve been wounded in the service of their country, surely, they deserve some leisure to aid their recovery?”

Sergeant Siddons, whose steely glare was not halved by the loss of an eye, cut off Hale’s response. “Ain’t you seen ‘amateur dramatics’ before, Captain Hale? We done it plenty on the march.”

“It’s indecorous,” Hale blustered, “Disruptive to discipline, perhaps harmful to the patients. No good soldier –”

“Magruder put on Othello in Mexico, ‘s I recall. And he’s whupped our asses – pardon me, Nurse Mary, Nurse Green – from Richmond and back.”

“General Magruder is an enemy of the Union!”

“Ayuh,” affirmed Siddons, as though he thought Dr. Hale as brainless as a scarecrow in the field. “Plenty of Union men was with Prince John then, and they saw no harm in it.”

“I shall speak to Doctor Summers about this,” said Hale, and stormed off to the next ward.

No one laughed, but Emma could see that many wanted to. It was a ridiculous picture, she owned: the dirty tails of Hale’s coat flapping after him, Welles’ dumbfounded gape and his hideously plaid skirt, the fake stage curtains. She smiled, too, ducking her head down.

“Who was with Magruder?” one of the bed-bound audience asked, as soon as Hale’s bootsteps faded from their hearing.

“Not many names you’d know. General Grant was with ‘em. Lieutenant Grant, then. ‘course,” and here Sergeant Siddons leaned in towards the circle of players and nurses, “Grant was Desdemona.”

 

**iv.**

“It’s bothering you.”

Henry Hopkins started in his chair, nearly sloshing the cheap corn whiskey out of the glass, and Jed Foster stepped forward into the firelight.

“Hmm? Oh, my apologies, Doctor Foster. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I noticed.”

Hopkins smiled, as if ashamed. It didn’t reach his eyes. “It has been a long and trying day.”

“May I join you?”

“Of course.” And he gestured to the other chair, without saying anything else.

Jed sat, feeling the day (and all the days previous) all the way down to his bones. He was beginning to have the right, he thought ruefully. And in this hospital, in this war, each day that passed was as good as seven. To him, and to Hopkins – not that his physician’s diagnosis was necessary there. The younger man slumped, but he worked his jaw and fidgeted as though there could be no rest, would not allow himself to rest. Jed decided to try again.

“The play is bothering you.”

“I’m glad to see our patients lively and engaged.”

“It’s having the opposite effect on you, Chaplain.”

Hopkins made no response, and Jed continued. “Unless, of course, the Bard is not to your taste?”

“I don’t know enough to have an opinion,” he replied, uncertainly, looking at the fire like a boy trying to crib an answer.

“Well. It’s the play, then.”

“Doctor Foster -”

Jed raised his hands. “I know, I know.”

Hopkins nodded, slowly, raising the glass to his lips and looking as haunted as Hamlet. The men had been rehearsing today, Jed recalled, Romeo and Juliet’s – exit. _Ah._

Rising to his feet, Jed moved towards the desk where he stashed a bottle out of sight of others, especially Hastings. Bad enough he was responsible for godly Hopkins knowing his friend had murdered himself, he couldn’t drink his liquor as well.

“Reverend,” he began, “I shall leave the subject as soon as you wish me. But if you want to speak with someone regarding Tom Fairfax – well. I know what you know.”

“I – I – I am,” Hopkins stuttered, and stopped. His breathing had become labored, his knuckles whitened. Jed sat back down, looking as reassuring as he could. Hopkins would find the words, he was sure.

 

**v.**

The stage, as it were, was struck, and the patients settled back into their wards. Jed watched Mary wearily move towards the stairs, only to glance back behind her, reassuring herself that the play really was finished and all her charges were abed. 

“Rest easy,” he hailed, handing her a lamp, “They’re all where they should be. You masterminded this as much as Corporal Gielgud, and deserve rest as well.”

“Last checks,” she protested.

“Have been finished. By you. I will pull rank, Nurse Mary, should you persist.”

“I- oh. You’re quite right.”

He gestured for her to go, and he followed to the stairs. 

“A successful evening,” he complimented.

“Indeed. I don’t think Aherne or Welles will seek out the limelight again, but I doubt William Shakespeare would be much disturbed by our amateur thespians. The men were busy, most of them amused, and Gielgud proud enough to burst.”

“All out of half-destroyed book and a few wool blankets. And some trying conversations along the way.”

Mary cocked her head, and her great dark eyes glittered with a question.

“Chaplain Hopkins,” he answered quietly, “He found the suicides troubling.”

“Theologically?”

“Yes, and personally. He – he knew someone who committed the act.”

“Poor man.”

They rounded the stair on the first landing, and Mary sighed. “Can anything be done for him?”

“Time, I think.”

“He’s young. He’ll have it,” she paused a moment, and then continued, “I had a trying conversation of my own.”

“With Hale?”

“No, Nurse Green. She was – is struggling with the war. She didn’t understand how we could be playing at death in the middle of suffering.”

Jed made a sympathetic noise. “And what treatment does Nurse Mary recommend?”

“Time. Work. The kindness of her friends.”

“All things conveniently to hand in Mansion House Hospital.”

“Indeed,” Mary said, “We should keep a closer watch on Nurse Green. And Chaplain Hopkins.”

“We can at least rely on them to watch each other,” he replied, perhaps too quickly or too glibly, for Mary stopped and shook her head. 

“No, no. They watch each other, but I hardly think Miss Green is capable of defying her mother and father in such a way.” 

“You must admit, Mary, they are a convincing modern-day pair. What are Montagues and Capulets to Unionists and Secessionists?” 

“Jed,” she reproached, though her heart was not in it, and he could see her amusement in the dark.

“The men have had their fun, why shouldn’t we? I think Hale would be a wonderful Tybalt.”

“Jed,” she protested, again, but her laugh was much closer to the surface.

“Unless you think him a Paris?” Jed grinned. “And you, Mary Phinney. What role for the angel of Mansion House?”

“I’ve never wanted the adulation of the crowd. Nurse is my profession, and Nurse is who I would be.”

“So, our Seccesh nurse is our Juliet, our hapless Chaplain not our Friar but a Romeo, and Mary Phinney takes for herself the humble roll of Nurse. Where am I in this production?”

“You seem a Mercutio to me,” Mary said, and a small smile, like a cat’s, crept onto her face.

Jed could not help but smile in return. It was not at her words, though he minded them, but at her voice, her smile, the weak candle-light in her hair, the ease with which she engaged him and – yes – smiled. 

“Are you saying you’d see me run through?”

“Not in the least.”

“Well, then, I pray thee, Nurse,” he said, grandly, to his audience of one, “explain thyself.”

“You’re clever,” she replied, her gaze frank and eyes sparkling in the lamplight, “And you enjoy your own cleverness. You perform it, at times, I think, and not for any persons’ benefit but your own.”

“A hit! A very palpable hit, Nurse Mary.” He mimed a wound as they turn on the stair.

“And yet, _Doctor Foster_ , under your medical texts and your wit, you are a loyal friend.”

This praise was unexpected, and his step stuttered on the stair. He glanced at her, anticipating – what? He hardly knew where he stood with her. A married man with an estranged wife, he’d mocked her, forced a kiss on her, said unforgivable things to her, and yet, here Mary was. Her slim hand on the newel post, her eyes sparkling, her cat-like smile, his name and forgiveness on her lips.

Her forgiveness, Jed thought, unbidden, was one more thing in his life he’d received without truly deserving it. He would deserve it, he told himself, a resolve he had made before and would make again. It was a heady thing, this clear-sighted regard of hers, steady as a lighthouse in a storm. If Mary Phinney believed he was a good man as well as a clever one, a compassionate physician as well as insightful, Jedediah Foster could be so.

Mary was still looking at him, and they were still on the landing in front of his door. He had not responded to her charges. _So much for cleverness_ , he thought, and at the same time, _she enjoys this speechlessness of mine_.

“I thank you for your generosity of spirit.”

“As much to him, else his thanks too much,” she quoted in return, and, hoisting her lantern before her once more, bade him good night. Jed watched her ascend the stair, the light of her lamp gradually disappearing as she made the next landing.

**Author's Note:**

> For middlemarch, whose gracious welcome into the fandom included Jed quoting _Romeo and Juliet_ at Mary. I couldn't resist riffing on it. I swear, this started just as the conversation between Mary and Jed in part V. - it just got away from me. It's belated, but I hope it's a worthy "thank you" gift.
> 
> Title from Act 2, Scene 2, of _Romeo and Juliet_.
> 
> All of the patient OCs are named after Shakespearean actors & actresses, because I'm incorrigible. 
> 
> In part iii, the incident at the Astor Opera House that Doctor Hale is referring to is the Astor Place Riot in May of 1849, that nominally sparked because of the rivalry between Edwin Forrest and William Charles McCready - an American actor and an English actor, respectively - and their interpretations of _Hamlet_. It also had a lot to do with economic problems, nativist sentiment, and problems with policing cities in the antebellum, but that's not why Hale remembers it.
> 
> Ulysses S. Grant did, apparently, audition to be Desdemona in a production of _Othello_ John Magruder was staging during the Mexican-American War - I've never found a first-hand account, although the Ulysses S. Grant National Historical Site's FB page has posted about it, and I've seen it referred to in a number of books and articles. If it's not true, I hope I'm excused.
> 
> John Magruder was called "Prince John" because of his penchant for high living and flair for the dramatic; squaring off against McClellan on the Peninsula Campaign, Magruder utilized sleight of hand and dramatics to make his position seem better than it was.
> 
> Lastly, thanks a million to my friend F- she's not on here, but I never would have finished this without her.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the play's the thing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15997538) by [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch)
  * [Doubt truth to be a liar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16033712) by [middlemarch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch)
  * [God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16185458) by [sagiow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagiow/pseuds/sagiow)




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